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Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

coinbase.com

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Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#411

Post by jerf »

_fat_santa wrote: post #374
Alex3917 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You hire a ton of people for these projects but end up letting them all go when they realized those projects weren't going to pan out. Which is weird, because they're not especially difficult projects. OpenSea was built by like five people.

It's a classic problem with big companies and software development. Say you worked for a Fortune500 company and they wanted you to build a TODO list app. The core app can be built in a week, but it ends up taking 3 months and a team of 10 engineers, why is that? * Well we need to integrate it with our engagement platform, meetings required with engagement to determine scope and requirements. * Well we need it to also…

The requirements will expand too. The startup is probably not worried about ADA compliance, deep Unicode compatibility, localization (the reason why we need to be good at Unicode), complying with the backup policy, security team review, auditing requirements, immediate compliance with privacy laws in other jurisdictions (e.g., a US startup might ignore EU law right away but the Fortune500 might not want to), especially with regard to personally identifiable information, etc.

You list a lot of perfectly valid "external" things that a Fortune500 company might add, but there's also internal things that it may need immediately that a startup won't.

(The backup policy being a particularly trenchant one, in my opinion. It's not an every day thing, but we've certainly seen several stories over the years on HN of startups basically going "whoops, we accidentally the data, sorry we're shut down now because this is unrecoverable for us".)

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#412

Post by monetus »

johnvanommen wrote: post #192
jesuscript wrote: post #8

They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. They were on an unhinged hiring spree before they ipo’d, so this was coming no matter what.

> They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. I interviewed at a place where 75% of the interviewers didn't show up. The only dude who did, had started the day before...

This sounds fascinating. What kind of software/industry?

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#413

Post by krisoft »

ptero wrote: post #387
krisoft wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for example replace physical collectibles But that is crazy. It is not that hard to understand the collectibles business is emotion based. You tickle the soul of the customers just the right way so they want to own a hoard of your crap. Then you create an artificial scarcity to profit from, and a thin veneer of "but-it-is-not-a-waste-of-money-because-i-can-sell-it-later" feeling to make your customers not instantly…

I am not arguing with this, just pointing a narrative I heard many times from otherwise sane people. While I had to work hard not to roll my eyes, the story must have enough converts to pull in some serious money.

Oh sure! I believe you 100%. I should have been clearer: I'm disagreeing with people you are describing, not with your description of people of such belief.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#414

Post by Animats »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #213
jesuscript wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best guess is that raising funding helps raise the valuation, especially as they approach IPO. So raise money for the sake of raising the valuation. You don’t really need the money, but you got it. What are you going to do with it to appease the investors? Well you gotta act like you are doing something with it, especially something that shows growth. Hire more. Hire more because we imagine more. Keep imagining un…

I think everyone was completely caught off-guard by the ferocity and pace of the crypto drawdown. Volumes have atrophied completely . It's not a cooling of retail interest vis-a-vis the stock market, but complete apathy and/or hatred. See the volume data for OpenSea as an example.

> I think everyone was completely caught off-guard by the ferocity and pace of the crypto drawdown.

You have to believe. Especially if you claim to be a leader.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#415

Post by newaccount74 »

guntherhermann wrote: post #272
tirpen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a degree yes it does, since they will almost certainly have to work in a team with other people. Being involved in crypto related things is a huge red flag that the person is most likely deeply immoral, greedy and opportunistic, which are traits that will most likely make the person hard to work with for the other team members. I think throwing them out entirely might be a bit extreme, but stamping them with a big…

> Being involved in crypto related things is a huge red flag that the person is most likely deeply immoral, greedy and opportunistic ... This is a huge assumption to make about someone's character when all you know is that they were employed in $CRYPTO_COMPANY_X FROM $START_DATE TO $END_DATE. You are forever tarring someone you don't even know. If you are involved in recruitment it might be worth taking a look at tho…

If the companies didn't matter, why would you put them on your CV?

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#417

Post by 1270018080 »

lkbm wrote: post #358
radicalbyte wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were caught off-guard then you've been sitting in a massive bubble. There has been open distrust and hatred of cryptocurrencies since long before NFTs were a thing. I would argue that NFTs did more to spread the word that cryptocurrencies are a farce than they did to create "value" for those behind them.

I've seen hatred of crypto, constant insistence that it's 100% fraud, and claims that it's worthless and will collapse for many years now. In 2019, no one was saying it would crash in 2022; they were saying it would crash in 2019 or just "it will crash eventually" In 2020, they weren't saying it would crash in 2022, they were saying it would crash in 2020 or just "it will crash eventually" In 2021, they weren't sayin…

People were calling crypto a scam. Which is not a prediction, just an observation. Trying to market time an irrational bubble like crypto is a fool's errand.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#418

Post by dvngnt_ »

msoad wrote: post #398
cs702 wrote: post #291

Despite numerous wrong turns and silly mistakes, Coinbase is looking more and more as the lonely survivor positioned to dominate crypto trading in the West. The company has lots of cash on hand in excess of corporate debt, almost no short-term corporate debt, customer assets backing all customer deposits, and as far as I can tell from a quick read of the latest quarterly report, a clean balance sheet with no red flag…

"Crypto Industry" only has investors. I have not seen an actual cryptocurrency user that says "I'm here to use this thing"

they exists but use cases aren't as popular

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#419

Post by nxmnxm99 »

danuker wrote: post #323
lottin wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is to say that if demand outpaces supply, price is going to go up. However, this is true of any asset. So why mention specifically 'crypto', as if there was something magical about 'crypto' that means it's bound to go up?

My point is yes, it is true of any asset. You might as well own cans of beans. But the purpose is to stave off the effects of monetary expansion while staying liquid. Cryptocurrency is in a special niche in that parameter space. While other assets are bound to provide long-term returns greater than inflation (for example, stocks and bonds [1]), cryptocurrency can not surpass inflation long-term, but it still does so…

Except gold has value. Crypto does not.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#420

Post by lopkeny12ko »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #66
jesuscript wrote: post #8

They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. They were on an unhinged hiring spree before they ipo’d, so this was coming no matter what.

> They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. What's the problem with that?

There's nothing inherently wrong with having junior engineers conducting interviews. But if a junior engineer is on my interview panel, I'm going to politely decline and end the process. A junior is not going to have the experience to accurately evaluate someone with close to two decades of experience writing software. Same goes for kids with Last I was interviewed by a junior, I brought up a concept for which he had never heard of. Even after explaining it in great detail, he argued with me for half the interview trying to explain why such a system would never hold in practice. Needless to say, I did not get the position. Total waste of my time.
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